HTML 5 and CSS 3

[shadowayex]

I know some browser have support for these, but I don't have a strong statistic on these per browser or anything.What I'm wondering is when would it be suitable to start developing in these. You see, not only am I a developer myself, but there is a class at a local high school that relies on information from me, and I'm wondering when I should start updating the curriculum to include HTML 5 and CSS 3 standards. As it stands, the curriculum teaches using the XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2 standards.Also, it'd be a nice thing for me to know, so I can be up to date in my own work.

[justsomeguy]

It would be a good idea to start teaching them, they are the future. All modern browsers have some level of support for both specs, so people can use a modern browser to test those things. All you need to keep in mind is the market share of the older browsers that don't support them, and make sure that people understand that even though modern browsers have some support and will continue to improve their support, the fact that so many people use old versions of IE means that you can't rely on those for a major site.

[boen_robot]

Some aspects of CSS3 are now implemented in all major desktop browsers, but not all.Such include CSS3 selectors (e.g. :nth-child()) and CSS3 colors (e.g. rgba()).Other aspects of CSS3, as well as most of the HTML5 markup part are still extremely unstable, and should not be teached at least until they reach Candidate Reccomendation stage.Some of the JavaScript APIs under HTML5's buzzy umbrella are somewhat stable, especially the parts which were sort of standards before HTML5 began, XMLHttpRequest being the most notable. From the new APIs, Web Workers is probably the most stable API, with it being implemented everywhere but IE.You should check out sites like CSS3.info to check out compatiblity. If something is implemented consistently in at least 3 out of the 4 major engines (5 in the case of JavaScript), you can consider it "safe for teaching".FWIW, if XHTML 1.0 and CSS2 are already being thought AND are thought in a standards aware fashion (e.g. "You could make errors in your code which browsers will try to work around, but you shouldn't", etc.), it's already doing an excellent job. The majority of HTML classes you hear about are generally teaching old school HTML (e.g. "You change the font with the font tag").